Knot Sense

​According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a tippet was originally “A long narrow slip of cloth or hanging part of dress, formerly worn, either attached to and forming part of the hood, head-dress, or sleeve, or loose, as a scarf or the like.” 
This delightfully anachronistic name is accompanied by an equally anachronistic measurement system.  Until the mid-20th century, tippets were made by drawing strands of silkworm gut through progressively smaller die holes.  Sizes ranged from 0x (undrawn gut), at 0.011” down to 5x (drawn five times) at 0.006”.  For reference, a human hair is approximately 0.001”. With the invention of Nylon in 1938, synthetics quickly replaced silkworm gut, and tippet sizes now range as fine as 8x, at 0.003”, although I’ve never heard of anybody fishing anything finer than 7x.  I’ve also never heard an angler refer to a tippet size in inches, and I suspect there are only a few hard-core gnurds who know or care about the actual size of tippets.

My fly vest has a lanyard with spools of tippet material from 2x to 7x, but I rarely use anything larger than 4x on Driftless streams.  I use 5x for most of my fishing, reserving the 4x for streamers and hoppers, 6x for Blue Wing Olives size #20-22, and 7x for the Trico hatch.  Last June I fished the Hex hatch on the Straight River using 3x.  Big mistake—an alligator-sized trout shook his head a few times and broke me off.  I go through enough 5x that I now buy 100-yard guide spools, a much better bargain than the standard 30-yard spools.  I played around with Fluorocarbon for a while.  It is invisible underwater, the breaking strength is higher, and it is more supple than nylon, but I could never get knots to hold.  

I attach the tippet to the leader with a blood knot, unless I am fishing a nymph with a dropper, in which case I use a double surgeon’s knot.  I find it is easier to leave a long tag end with which to attach the dropper. Alas, the surgeon’s knot lacks the elegance of the blood knot, the most beautiful knot in all of angling.  I used to let the knot trimmings fall to the ground.  They are fiendishly difficult to capture, and I figured that a few inches of ultra-thin nylon wouldn’t hurt the stream.  But then my wife started lecturing me about microplastics getting into her artisanal French sea salt and ruining the planet, so I started looking for a solution.  I found it in the “Mono Master”, which is basically a hair curler inside a cylinder with a small handle that can be used to winch in the waste tippet and hold it securely for later disposal.  I still leave plenty of tippet behind when I hang flies in trees or submerged obstacles.  I atone for this by gathering mono left behind by other anglers.  It’s not a perfect solution, and it brings to mind the story that using carbon offsets for plane flights is like cheating on your spouse and then donating money to the church.  But if I don’t lose any flies, I’m unlikely to be putting my fly where the fish live.

I attach flies to the tippet with a Rapala Loop.  I learned this from a guide on the Provo River in Utah who explained that the loop allows the fly to swing freely in the river, delivering a more natural presentation than fixed knots.  I suspect this matters more on the tiny #24 midge pupa we were using on the Provo than it does on the larger flies that I typically use in the Driftless, but now I can tie the Rapala Loop almost as fast as a Clinch knot, and that guide did get us into a lot of fish.  
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a tippet was originally “A long narrow slip of cloth or hanging part of dress, formerly worn, either attached to and forming part of the hood, head-dress, or sleeve, or loose, as a scarf or the like.”
This delightfully anachronistic name is accompanied by an equally anachronistic measurement system.  Until the mid-20th century, tippets were made by drawing strands of silkworm gut through progressively smaller die holes.  Sizes ranged from 0x (undrawn gut), at 0.011” down to 5x (drawn five times) at 0.006”.  For reference, a human hair is approximately 0.001”. With the invention of Nylon in 1938, synthetics quickly replaced silkworm gut, and tippet sizes now range as fine as 8x, at 0.003”, although I’ve never heard of anybody fishing anything finer than 7x.  I’ve also never heard an angler refer to a tippet size in inches, and I suspect there are only a few hard-core gnurds who know or care about the actual size of tippets.
 
My fly vest has a lanyard with spools of tippet material from 2x to 7x, but I rarely use anything larger than 4x on Driftless streams.  I use 5x for most of my fishing, reserving the 4x for streamers and hoppers, 6x for Blue Wing Olives size #20-22, and 7x for the Trico hatch.  Last June I fished the Hex hatch on the Straight River using 3x.  Big mistake—an alligator-sized trout shook his head a few times and broke me off.  I go through enough 5x that I now buy 100-yard guide spools, a much better bargain than the standard 30-yard spools.  I played around with Fluorocarbon for a while.  It is invisible underwater, the breaking strength is higher, and it is more supple than nylon, but I could never get knots to hold. 
 
I attach the tippet to the leader with a blood knot, unless I am fishing a nymph with a dropper, in which case I use a double surgeon’s knot.  I find it is easier to leave a long tag end with which to attach the dropper. Alas, the surgeon’s knot lacks the elegance of the blood knot, the most beautiful knot in all of angling.  I used to let the knot trimmings fall to the ground.  They are fiendishly difficult to capture, and I figured that a few inches of ultra-thin nylon wouldn’t hurt the stream.  But then my wife started lecturing me about microplastics getting into her artisanal French sea salt and ruining the planet, so I started looking for a solution.  I found it in the “Mono Master”, which is basically a hair curler inside a cylinder with a small handle that can be used to winch in the waste tippet and hold it securely for later disposal.  I still leave plenty of tippet behind when I hang flies in trees or submerged obstacles.  I atone for this by gathering mono left behind by other anglers.  It’s not a perfect solution, and it brings to mind the story that using carbon offsets for plane flights is like cheating on your spouse and then donating money to the church.  But if I don’t lose any flies, I’m unlikely to be putting my fly where the fish live.
 
I attach flies to the tippet with a Rapala Loop.  I learned this from a guide on the Provo River in Utah who explained that the loop allows the fly to swing freely in the river, delivering a more natural presentation than fixed knots.  I suspect this matters more on the tiny #24 midge pupa we were using on the Provo than it does on the larger flies that I typically use in the Driftless, but now I can tie the Rapala Loop almost as fast as a Clinch knot, and that guide did get us into a lot of fish. ​